Chapter 16: The Forgotten List
"God, it's good to be home." Sam scrunched her toes lovingly in the carpet as she loaded up another forkful of fried rice.
"Was the alternate reality unpleasant?" Teal'c asked from his place on the couch beside her.
That wasn't really something she wanted to go into – and it wasn't what she'd meant, anyway. "No, no. It's good to be home," she corrected, pointing to the floor beneath her feet. "Even before that whole mess, I hadn't been off the base in over a week."
Colonel O'Neill looked up from the armchair, surprised. "You hadn't?"
She shook her head. No, she'd been spending most of her time writing up reports – on everything she'd learned about Fifth and the Replicators, or about the Ancient Repository of knowledge, or, before that, the devices they'd retrieved from that warehouse with the human/Goa'uld hybrid... Meanwhile, the colonel had been either sleeping in a stasis chamber or on medical leave, as he had somehow (even though he was perfectly healthy) convinced both the new doctor and the new base commander that he was entitled.
"You know, Jack," Daniel spoke up, "some of us have responsibilities other than just running around on other worlds carrying a big gun and pissing off aliens."
"You lie," the colonel accused, shooting his friend a dirty look.
Yes, it was nice to be home. Until Daniel asked, "Even though I don't think I want to know, I have to ask. What was it like over there? I mean, how different was it?"
"Pretty damn different, Daniel," she answered curtly.
"I'm just intrigued, because it seems like some things have been constant in every reality we've seen."
Again, she shook her head. Hammond, Janet, Colonel O'Neill, Teal'c... all wrong. "Walter was there. That was about where the similarities ended."
"Well," Colonel O'Neill spoke up dryly, perhaps still a little miffed from being picked on earlier, "at least you had Daniel. For companionship."
Sam's fork froze mid-way to her mouth, his tone making it crystal clear that he meant that in the dirtiest way possible. Slowly, she set down the fork, then removed her plate from her lap to the coffee table for safety. "Remember that list we have, sir?" she asked. "Of the things we're never supposed to mention again?"
The second he leaned forward in the chair, excited, she knew she was in trouble. "You mean like the time on P3X-595 where you drank that stuff that made you take off your-"
"Since you bring that up all the time, no," she interrupted. "I mean the one about things like P5X-223."
His expression went blank.
"Uh," Daniel spoke up, "that would be the one where you got a little drunk and fooled around with the chief's daughter and ended up with hives on, um..."
Sam rocketed to her feet indignantly. "And that's the second time some alien woman has given you an S-"
"Oh, that list!" the colonel insisted before she could finish the sentence. "Well, you know, since it's a list about things we're supposed to forget, I guess I... forgot."
"Uh-huh." That was a total load of bull. "This is officially going on the top of that list, sir. So we need never mention it again."
That seemed to satisfy him – probably because that list contained a lot more things that applied to him than her, and even though her embarrassment threshold was a lot lower than his, it probably equaled out. He went back to his Chinese, and Sam settled onto the couch.
"O'Neill," Teal'c spoke up, "have you not often told me that lists are finite?"
The colonel stared at him in a way that clearly said he hadn't.
"I believe you once told me that in order for an item to be added to the top of a list, the item last in line must..."
"Fall off," Colonel O'Neill supplied when the Jaffa trailed off for lack of the correct terminology.
"Indeed. What, then, has fallen off this list?"
Oh, there were so many options, and all of them sucked. The other three caught each others' eyes for only a millisecond before returning to their plates with gusto.